Berlin based artist/ illustrator... "film frames provide me with ready-made compositions and figurative constellations that I can work from."

We get a lot of great emails from a lot of talented people introducing us to their work. From time to time we'll be sharing their work here in our mini interviews segment... To be considered for a mini interview send a few jpegs to: mini(at)fecalface.com

Make sure the images are at least 600 pixels in width.

Location? Age? Education? Website?

I live in Berlin, Germany, since late 2008, but lived most of the 2000s in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada, and I grew up in the alpine Principality of Liechtenstein (population 35.000). Im 36. I went to the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design (now Emily Carr University) in Vancouver, and to the Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, USA, for an exchange semester in Illustration, and I graduated with a Bachelor of Design from Emily Carr in 2006. Ive only started art school at age 29, in 2002. Before that, my life had been, lets say, a bit unfocused. While on a noncommittal odyssey of post-secondary education (including Linguistics and American Literature), I played in cassette-only punk bands, hosted a radio show (was scolded in meetings for making up my own station IDs (jingles) and playing music that was too hard), hosted a TV show (there was only one show on Liechtenstein TV (per week) at 6pm on Sundays, and it got cancelled after a few months due to low interest from both the public and advertisers; needless to say the TV station (2 full-time employees) went under after the cancellation of its only show). Throughout the Nineties Ive done posters and design for DIY bands, labels, venues and zines in Switzerland, Germany, Austria and Liechtenstein. Since graduation I work as a freelance designer and illustrator for $, and as a visual artist for my sanity. You can find my work on www.manfrednaescher.com and www.arcademi.com/manfrednaescher and my zines through www.gute-seiten.net/site/?cat=10&s=screenshots or through my website.

Claude Jade - from an upcoming series of portraits of female actors (2009-2010, in progress)

How would you describe your work to someone?

Right now I'm focusing mainly on expressive watercolors on paper, usually figurative, often portraits. I've been working on serial paintings based on film frames that I recontextualize in the form of full-color zines.

Mondays to Thursdays I get up at 6.30am, and try to get something substantial done before noon. Then I usually work a bit more casually in the afternoon or into the evening. On deadlines I often work into the night. I have a small studio space at home. Music: Right now: No Kids, Small Black, Nite Jewel, the xx, No Age, Misfits, Bert Jansch, The Green Arrows, Christian Walt, Eluvium

La Strada - Fighting (2009)

How do you pay the bills?

Let's just say I'm frugal. Next question...

Describe your process for creating new work.

In general, I start with an idea, and then produce pretty simple, straight-forward paintings and drawings. Reduction, fragmentation and editing are key for my process: I really need pretty severe constraints for what I do, otherwise I would never start a project; too many choices are paralyzing for me. What I need more than paints and paper is some kind of conceptual framework, and my interests have lead me to the concepts of memory and artifice to provide me with an overriding theme for my work. Films are great source material for me, as they create an illusion of life through artifice. The repository of emotions and situations that films consist of, all those things we can relate to as viewers - not to mention the time and place they were made in - can trigger or shape memories. And on a practical level, film frames provide me with ready-made compositions and figurative constellations that I can work from.

Brigitte Bardot - from an upcoming series of portraits of female actors (2009-2010, in progress)

Whenever I begin a project, I try to distill an essence of what I want to depict from my source material. For example, for The Endless Summer, a series of pictures of surfing based on the film of the same name, I used "warmth" as the defining visual principle. This made me decide on a color palette that was derived from the idea of fire (yellows and reds), which, in turn, helped define the mood of the pictures. Another example of my approach to color would be The French Connection, which is a series of portraits of Gene Hackman as a cop on the hunt. I decided to show the film's famous chase scene exclusively through portraits of Hackman (no car, no street, just his face), and show all the anger, confusion and fear, this constant fluidity of extreme emotions that's conveyed through his face, with a dramatic, expressive use of color.

I get the DVD's I use from the public library in our neighborhood. So I never know what I'll be getting, because I would just see what they have that day and bring something home. I like the surprise aspect of this approach. Usually I work from films I already know and love for one reason or another, and working like this makes me look at the films in an investigative way and I tend to notice aspects I may not have paid much attention to before. It for sure helps me to learn about films and film-making, and it helps keeping me excited for the project.

The Endless Summer (2009)

The Endless Summer (2009)

The Endless Summer (2009)

Tools of the trade?

Films from the library, a 6-year-old Powerbook in disconcerting shape, a program to make screen captures from DVD's (SnapNDrag), a projector, a wall, tape, paper, pencils, watercolors, brushes, a scanner, Photoshop, InDesign, a friendly local print shop.

What are you really excited about right now?

Some of my friends are working on great stuff right now: I love the new Depatterning CD-R (noise and processed field recordings, a bit like Lucky Dragons, but with a more personal, intimate approach). There's a new film that just went into production that I'm involved with as a graphic designer, it's by Alison McAlpine who won the Special Jury Award at Slamdance two years ago (her new film is not done yet, but my mind is already blown). My friend Derek Howard is working on a film that got him to travel to some incredible places on the planet (http://vivanlasantipodas.vox.com). And the new scarves from Louis by Amanda are amazing (www.etsy.com/shop/louisbyamanda).

The Wild One - Fighting (2009)

Fubar - Fighting (2009)

I just gave you $1,000,000. Quick, what do you do with it!

Bring it to the bank. And think about it later... Ok, no. I'd buy a vintage Braun record player. Buy all my best friends a flight to Miami Beach in the winter. Buy a lot of my friends' art. Get an assistant, pay him/her well. I don't need much, so I could probably live off the rest of the million comfortably for a long time...

Best way to spend a day off?

A picnic in a park with good friends I haven't seen in a long time.

The French Connection (2009)

The French Connection (2009)

What do you love most about lving in Berlin?

The cultural wealth and historical density of Berlin is something else. The food is great. Public transit is great. The library system is amazing. And it's still relatively cheap to live here.

Ok, your chance to rant and rave about something... Talk shit.

Support your friends, they need it (Fecal Face is good with that). Go see NoMeansNo if you feel like you're growing old. It will make you feel better.

The French Connection (2009)

Upcoming shows/ projects?

I have a drawing in the Anonymous Drawings show here in Berlin right now, a drawing in the upcoming issue of the great Toronto-based Free Drawings zine. Some shows in Germany with my zines, some confirmed, some not. Some illustration commissions. A new Screenshots zine in March. I'm preparing some three-dimensional work and an upcoming stop motion animation project. Some enjoyable graphic design work. In general, I'm planning to get more ambitious with my watercolor and drawing work, get more focused, and at the same time expand my visual vocabulary. I mean, I haven't done this for very long (I only got serious about art in 2009 with the launch of Screenshots), but the response has been great so far. I just want to keep learning and keep having fun with it, everything else is just icing on the cake (like this interview!).

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

I'm not sure how many people are lucky enough to have The San Francisco Giants 3 World Series trophies put on display at their work for the company's employees to enjoy during their lunch break, but that's what happened the other day at Deluxe. So great.

When works of art become commodities and nothing else, when every endeavor becomes “creative” and everybody “a creative,” then art sinks back to craft and artists back to artisans—a word that, in its adjectival form, at least, is newly popular again. Artisanal pickles, artisanal poems: what’s the difference, after all? So “art” itself may disappear: art as Art, that old high thing. Which—unless, like me, you think we need a vessel for our inner life—is nothing much to mourn.

Hard-working artisan, solitary genius, credentialed professional—the image of the artist has changed radically over the centuries. What if the latest model to emerge means the end of art as we have known it? --continue reading

"[Satire] is important because it brings out the flaws we all have and throws them up on the screen of another person," said Turner. “How they react sort of shows how important that really is.” Later, he added, "Charlie took a hit for everybody." -read on

NYC --- A new graffiti abatement program put forth by the police commissioner has beat cops carrying cans of spray paint to fill in and cover graffiti artists work in an effort to clean up the city --> Many cops are thinking it's a waste of resources, but we're waiting to see someone make a project of it. Maybe instructions for the cops on where to fill-in?

The NYPD is arming its cops with cans of spray paint and giving them art-class-style lessons to tackle the scourge of urban graffiti, The Post has learned.

Shootings are on the rise across the city, but the directive from Police Headquarters is to hunt down street art and cover it with black, red and white spray paint, sources said... READ ON

SAN FRANCISCO --- The Headlands Center for the Arts is preparing for their largest fundraiser of the year set to go down on June 4th at SOMArts here in the city. Art auction, food, drinks, live music, etc and all for helping to support a great institution up in the Marin Headlands. ~details

ABOUT HEADLANDSHeadlands Center for the Arts provides an unparalleled environment for the creative process and the development of new work and ideas. Through a range of programs for artists and the public, we offer opportunities for reflection, dialogue, and exchange that build understanding and appreciation for the role of art in society.

We haven't been featuring many interviews as of late. Let's change that up as we check in with a few local San Francisco artists like Kevin Earl Taylor here whom we studio visited back in 2009 (PHOTOS & VIDEO). It's been awhile, Kevin...

If you like guns and boobs, head on over to the Shooting Gallery; just don't expect the work to be all cheap ploys and hot chicks. With Make Stuff by Peter Gronquist (Portland) in the main space and Morgan Slade's Snake in the Eagle's Shadow in the project space, there is plenty spectacle to be had, but if you look just beyond it, you might actually get something out of the shows.

Fifty24SF opened Street Anatomy, a new solo show by Austrian artist Nychos a week ago last Friday night. He's been steadily filling our city with murals over the last year, with one downtown on Geary St. last summer, and new ones both in the Haight and in Oakland within the last few weeks, but it was really great to see his work up close and in such detail.

Congrats on our buddies at Needles and Pens on being open and rad for 11 years now. Mission Local did this little short video featuring Breezy giving a little heads up on what Needles and Pens is all about.

Matt Wagner recently emailed over some photos from The Hellion Gallery in Tokyo, who recently put together a show with AJ Fosik (Portland) called Beast From a Foreign Land. The gallery gave twelve of Fosik's sculptures to twelve Japanese artists (including Hiro Kurata who is currently showing in our group show Salt the Skies) to paint, burn, or build upon.

Backwoods Gallery in Melbourne played host to a huge group exhibition a couple of weeks back, with "Gold Blood, Magic Weirdos" Curated by Melbourne artist Sean Morris. Gold Blood brought together 25 talented painters, illustrators and comic artists from Australia, the US, Singapore, England, France and Spain - and marked the end of the Magic Weirdos trilogy, following shows in Perth in 2012 and London in 2013.

San Francisco based Fecal Pal Jeremy Fish opened his latest solo show Hunting Trophies at LA's Mark Moore Gallery last week to massive crowds and cabin walls lined with imagery pertaining to modern conquest and obsession.

Well, John Felix Arnold III is at it again. This time, he and Carolyn LeBourgios packed an entire show into the back of a Prius and drove across the country to install it at Superchief Gallery in NYC. I met with him last week as he told me about the trip over delicious burritos at Taqueria Cancun (which is right across the street from FFDG and serves what I think is the best burrito in the city) as the self proclaimed "Only overweight artist in the game" spilled all the details.

Ever Gold opened a new solo show by NYC based Henry Gunderson a couple Saturday nights ago and it was literally packed. So packed I couldn't actually see most of the art - but a big crowd doesn't seem like a problem. I got a good laugh at what I would call the 'cock climbing wall' as it was one of the few pieces I could see over the crowd. I haven't gotten a chance to go back and check it all out again, but I'm definitely going to as the paintings that I could get a peek at were really high quality and intruiguing. You should do the same.

The paintings in the show are each influenced by a musician, ranging from Freddy Mercury, to Madonna, to A Tribe Called Quest and they are so stylistically consistent with each musician's persona that they read as a cohesive body of work with incredible variation. If you told me they were each painted by a different person, I would not hesitate to believe you and it's really great to see a solo show with so much variety. The show is fun, poppy, very well done, and absolutely worth a look and maybe even a listen.

With rising rent in SF and knowing mostly other young artists without capitol, I desired a way to live rent free, have a space to do my craft, and get to see more of the world. Inspired by the many historical artists who have longed similar longings I discovered the beauty of artist residencies. Lilo runs Adhoc Collective in Vienna which not only has a fully equipped artists creative studio, but an indoor halfpipe, and private artist quarters. It was like a modern day castle or skate cathedral. It exists in almost a utopic state, totally free to those that apply and come with a real passion for both art and skateboarding

I just wanted to share with you a piece I recently finished which took me 4 years to complete. Titled "How To Lose Yourself Completely (The September Issue)", it consists of a copy of the September 2007 issue of Vogue magazine (the issue they made the documentary about) with all faces masked with a sharpie, and everything else entirely whited out. 840 pages of fun. -Bryan Schnelle

Jeremy Fish opens Hunting Trophies tonight, Saturday April 5th, at the Los Angeles based Mark Moore Gallery. The show features new work from Fish inside the "hunting lodge" where viewers climb inside the head of the hunter and explore the history of all the animals he's killed.

Beautiful piece entitled "The Albatross and the Shipping Container", Ink on Paper, Mounted to Panel, 47" Diameter, by San Francisco based Martin Machado now on display at FFDG. Stop in Saturday (1-6pm) to view the group show "Salt the Skies" now running through April 19th. 2277 Mission St. at 19th.

For some reason I thought it would be a good idea to quit my job, move out of my house, leave everything and travel again. So on August 21, 2013 I pushed a canoe packed full of gear into the headwaters of the Mississippi River in Lake Itasca, Minnesota, along with four of my best friends. Exactly 100 days later, I arrived at a marina near the Gulf of Mexico in a sailboat.

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